It was a fine, small, pointed, and wandering handwriting, and Jack in vain strove to make out the letters in the middle of the Polish lady's name.
"I don't care!" he said. "She's kind, too. So are all the rest of them; and Mr. Guilderaufenberg's one of the best fellows I ever met. Now I've got over six dollars, and I can make some more right away."
He pocketed his money, and felt more confident than ever; and he walked out of the Hotel Dantzic just as his father, at home in Crofield, was reading to Mrs. Ogden and Aunt Melinda and the children the letter he had written in Albany, on Saturday.
They all had their comments to make, but at the end of it the tall blacksmith said to his wife:
"There's one thing certain, Mary. I won't let go of any of that land till after they've run the railway through it."
"Land?" said Aunt Melinda. "Why, it's nothing but gravel. They can't do anything with it."
"It joins mine," said Mr. Ogden; "and I own more than an acre behind the shop. We'll see whether the railroad will make any difference. Well, the boy's reached the city long before this!"
There was silence for a moment after that, and then Mr. Ogden went over to the shop. He was not very cheerful, for he began to feel that Jack was really gone from home.
In Mertonville, Mary Ogden was helping Mrs. Murdoch in her housework, and seemed to be disposed to look out of the window, rather than to talk.
"Now, Mary," said the editor's wife, "you needn't look so peaked, and feel so blue about the way you got along with that class of girls—"